S’mores Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich

If you’ve never had a macaron ice cream sandwich before, drop everything now and make this. It’s really something you have to experience at least once (or a 100 times) in your life.

The macaron shell is chewy when frozen and the graham cracker make it just SO much better than the original. The soft and creamy toasted marshmallow ice cream is swirled with oozy gooey chocolate caramel, which makes this the perfect dessert.

I actually just had one for breakfast…dessert. #breakfastdessert It’s a new thing now, and you’re welcome 🙂

Macarons are known to be very finicky and temperamental. I also have trouble baking them off just right at home unless I use my tiny convection toaster oven, which I don’t. This recipes is actually a lot easier than the regular macarons. Because we’re adding graham cracker crumbs to the batter, the gluten helps hold the structure, resulting in more successful batches of macarons.

Ingredients:

chocolate caramel

3/4c granulated sugar

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp water

1/2c heavy cream

2 tbsp cocoa powder

pinch of salt

marshmallow ice cream

2c mini marshmallows

2c heavy cream

1c milk

1/3 granulated sugar

4 egg yolks

1/2 vanilla extract

pinch of salt

graham cracker macarons

4 egg whites

2 tbsp + 1 tsp granulated sugar

4 sheets graham crackers (1/2c crumbs)

3/4c almond meal

2c powdered sugar

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp caramel coloring (optional)

CHOCOLATE CARAMEL:

Whenever you make caramel, make sure to scale everything out since caramel goes pretty fast, not leaving you much time to scale something when you need it. The cocoa powder and cream can go together.

Put the sugar in a pot and add just enough water to wet the sugar. Be sure to wipe down the sides of the pot to get rid of any sugar granules above the water line. Turn the heat on high, and do not stir!

Once it starts to brown, go ahead and stir once to even out the color. Since this is a small amount of caramel, it tends to get dark pretty fast, which doesn’t leave you a large window to get the color just right. You can choose to turn the heat down to medium to slow down the caramel at this point.

To actually check the color, give it a quick stir and hold up the spatula (or whisk) and look at the drops. That is the actual color of the caramel, not what you see in the pot. Once it turns a light ambers like the picture below, add the water. Be careful because it will sputter and the steam coming up will be very hot.

When the caramel calms down a bit, add the cream and cocoa powder and stir until smooth. Simmer for a minute.

Add the butter and stir

Strain. You will have to push it through with a spatula, but you definitely don’t want chunks of cocoa powder in your caramel.

Cool it in the fridge for at least 6 hours. I left mine overnight. Transfer to a pastry bag (a ziploc bag will rip when trying to pipe because the caramel will set up pretty thick).

TOASTED MARSHMALLOW ICE CREAM:

Toast the marshmallows by setting your oven to the broil setting. Don’t walk away! Once the marshmallows start to brown they will burn fast. Once they’re toasted, I like to give them a toss and toast them again.

Put the toasted marshmallows, milk, and sugar in a small pot over medium heat. Continually stir until the marshmallows are melted. You may have to turn off the heat and continue to stir if the mixture starts to boil over and the marshmallows still aren’t melted.

Temper marshmallow mixture into the yolks

Return to the pot and cook on medium heat until thickened. Don’t stop stirring! You know it’s done when it coats the back of a spoon. You don’t want to over cook this because then it will turn out like scrambled eggs.

Strain and put plastic right on top of the liquid to prevent skin from forming. I left mine overnight, but if you’re trying to get it all done in one day, you can chill over an ice bath.

Whip the heavy cream to soft peaks, and fold into the marshmallow ice cream base. If you’re wondering why I whip my cream and add it in last, check out this post. We want to make sure this ice cream is nice and fluffy, and not completely hard when frozen. Trust me, it will make your life so much easier later on in this recipe.

Before you the spin the ice cream in the ice cream maker, make sure your chocolate caramel is really cold. Not just halfway cooled because then it will melt your ice cream when you try to “swirl” it in. If you’re not sure, you can put the chocolate caramel pastry bag in the freezer while you spin the ice cream.

Ok now that we’ve taken care of that, spin the ice cream according to your ice cream maker’s instructions.

While that’s going (it should take about 15 minutes in a KA ice cream maker attachment) line a 9×9 making pan with wax paper like this:

I like to put my ice cream container in the freezer to make sure it’s cold and doesn’t instantly melt the base touches it.

When your ice cream is done, take out the paddle but keep the ice cream in the IC maker. Just to make sure it doesn’t get all melty while you’re “swirling”

Cut a SMALL hole in the pastry bag, and drizzle over the top, and fold. By fold I mean scoop up the ice cream from the bottom and flip it on top, and smoosh down. Repeat until all the caramel is gone, making sure to scrape the sides of the IC maker and fold. DO NOT OVERMIX because this will result in the swirls blending into the ice cream.

Scoop IC into the 9x9in baking pan and spread it out nice and flat with an offset spatula

Freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight.

GRAHAM CRACKER MACARONS:

Blend the powdered sugar, graham crackers, and almond meal in a food processor. Since we are not sifting (because I’m lazy) this like we normally would for macarons, I let the food processor go for a good minute or two.

Set the graham cracker mixture aside, and lets go ahead and make the meringue. Be sure to check out this tips and technique page to get the different stage of egg whites correct. This is probably the part most people mess up on when making macarons.

Whip the egg whites until foamy, and add cream of tartar. Continue whipping on medium until soft peak, then start adding the granulated sugar in a small stream. Once you’re done adding the sugar, add the color. Continue whipping until the meringue reaches stiff peaks like this:

Add to the graham cracker mixture and fold. This is also another crucial step in macarons. If you under mix, the shells won’t be smooth, and if you over mix, the batter might end up runny and broken. They also might not bake off correctly.

I’ll try to explain “folding” the best I can. The point in folding is to try and avoid deflating the meringue, but still incorporating all the ingredients together. You will be taking the spatula, and start the the top of the bowl (12 o’clock). Scrape it along the bottom of the right side (if your right handed) all the way around to about 9 o’clock. Once your spatula is there, I pull up the batter and flip it on top. I repeat as I turn the bowl.

The end result should be batter that moves like molten lava. If you drop some batter on the top, it should very slowly spread flat, leaving no trace of the drop. As you can see, it flatten slow enough for me to get a picture of it. If it flattens too fast, it is probably over mixed, If it doesn’t flatten enough, give it one or two more folds and check again.

When I pipe these, I use a round tip to make sure the macarons will be round and not lopsided. Also, before you lift the tip, drag the point around the top of the macaron to avoid sharp points. You basically don’t want them to look like kisses. Piping them about 2 inches will result in about 3 inch macarons.

Bang the tray on the countertop (straight down, not tilted) to release air bubbles and to help the macarons spread into a nice, smooth, and round shape.

Dry for 20 minutes, or until the tops of the macarons are dry to the touch. They should not stick to you fingers when touched.

Set your oven to 300°F. Another reason why macarons don’t bake off well in homes is because many people’s ovens are not calibrated. Investing in a oven thermometer is a good idea (so is investing in a convection oven, but a girl can only dream).

Bake for about 1o minutes. Mine took 11 minutes, and this may vary depending on how big you piped the macarons. To check, push the shell with a finger while it’s in the oven. If it moves from it’s feet (the ruffles) then they’re not done. They should not slide from the feet when touched in the oven. It’s also better to over bake than to under bake, because under baked macarons end up hollow on the inside.

Once the shells are done and cooled, carefully remove them from the parchment or silpat, match them together with a same sized shell.

Store in ziploc until ready to assemble the macaron ice cream sandwiches.

Pick a round cutter the same size as your shells, or close to it. If you don’t have a full set of round cutters, you can pipe your macarons according to the cutter size you do have.

Cut out the ice cream circles, sandwich in-between two macarons.

When I ran out of room to cut out any more ice cream circles, I lifted the wax paper and put it in a 8inch loaf pan. I spread out the ice cream again with an offset spatula, and refroze to cut out more ice cream.

The best things about these is that you can just pull one out of the freezer and eat. No scooping, and no sharing 😛